The Editor, Sir:

Is it really a state agency that has approved the establishment of a cemetery in Burnt Ground, Hanover? If any geologist has the poor and oppressed citizens of Burnt Ground and its environs at heart, please publish a map of the underground water system and the natural drainage system in that area.

As an environmental student, what I have seen, from one such map, is that a lot of these natural drains which carry water to the river leads through and directly from the cemetery. I challenge any geologist or hydrologist to publish one of these maps and prove me wrong.

The biggest threat

In 1996-1998 a group of Australians from the Natural Centre for Ground Water Management of the University of Technology, Sydney, conducted extensive research on contamination of cemeteries and crematoria. This was done over a 136-day period. They concluded that the biggest problem to ground water sources underneath cemeteries comes from rainfall. Rainwater has a number of options when it hits the ground. It can evaporate, pool, run off to the sea, rivers and streams or infiltrate the soil.

According to the Australians, it is this infiltration that poses the biggest threat. As the rainwater infiltrates the decaying wood of a casket, it soaks up all the possible contamination from the contents and deposits it into the underground water system.

Why would this not happen to the Great River which so many people use on a daily basis. If the Government intends to balance the equation between the haves and those that have very little it should act now and decisively.

I am, etc.,

STANLEY BROOMFIELD

Cross Keys P.O

Manchester